Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: COHOUSING-L digest 443

[MartyR707 (MartyR707]

In a message dated 3/20/98 11:05:39 AM, Dan Everett of coho-L wrote:

<<We are about to start construction on our new house at Kenney
        Ridge! My wife and I would like to invite the members of our
        community to some sort of "ground blessing" ceremony at our
        site. Does anyone have suggestions/stories to help us?>>

We had a delightful groundbreaking ceremony at our property.  some of the
highlights were:

A Maypole dance which kids and adults participated in - dancing around the
pole while weaving the long ribbons - it was beautiful and fun.

One of our members is part of an English country dance group and they
performed and then danced and marched over the whole property with us parading
behind as they tamped their sticks to ward of evil spirits.

We invited the mayor of our small community to speak briefly and she welcomed
us warmly to the town.

We had a circle where each member turned a shovel of dirt and said a few
words.  children followed along and planted seeds where the dirt was turned.

We had a seed planting activity for the kids where they planted flower seeds
in small pots to plant later at their new home.

We invited the neighbors of our new property so they could start to get to
know us and see that we weren't some kind of wierdos.

We all invited family and close friends and had lots of food and champagne,
etc. to celebrate the momentous event.

We made little signs to mark where each of our houses would be and then set up
chairs and visiting areas at our home site so we could entertain our friends
as they toured the property.  This was one of my favorite parts because I
heard and saw all these little activities going on around the property which
gave me a real life feeling of what it would be like when we lived there and
we would hear voices across the way, see our neighbors at their daily life,
etc.

(I am CCing this to our members and associates cuz some of them weren't around
yet and some of us might like to remember just what a special day it was -
almost a year ago!)

Marty Roberts
Two Acre Wood, Sebastopol, CA
Where we hope to start building by May Day of THIS year!!